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I’ve discussed this with so many people I figured I might as well lay it all out here as well.

First off, there are many terms you will hear in the media concerning the gun debate, such as “high powered,” “armor piercing,” “assault rifle,” and “assault weapon.” “High powered” is obviously a very subjective term and can mean anything; even a gun that fires a tiny .22 cartridge can kill someone.

“Armor piercing” is another tricky one as well. A lot of times the media will use this in relation to bulletproof vests that members of law enforcement wear. Usually these vests only protect from pistol rounds, so in this case any rifle round would be considered “armor piercing.”

“Assault rifle” is used a lot, especially in relation to the infamous AR-15 rifle. First of all, the AR in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle,” it’s an abbreviation of Armalite, a manufacturer. Second, the definition of assault rifle includes the necessary characteristic that the rifle is automatic. This means that if you hold down the trigger, more than one round fires automatically. AR-15′s are not automatic, they are semi-automatic, meaning that you must pull the trigger for every round that you want to fire. Automatic weapons are not available to the general public!

Lastly, there is no definition for “assault weapon.” An assault weapon is whatever the media wants it to be on any given day. To me an assault weapon is any weapon that can be used for assault, which is any gun (and many other weapons that are not guns). An assault weapon may be an AR-15 this year, but next year if someone commits a widely publicized murder with a shotgun, that definition could change.

The sad part about this is that a portion of the media and the legislators that they support do not know any of this. They literally know nothing about guns. The part that is even worse is that a good number of them do have this knowledge and choose to knowingly mislead the public with their scare tactics.

Many of these members of the media and the gun grabbing legislators will pretend to be appreciative of gun rights and attempt to appear as moderate on the issue by showing respect to hunters and even claiming that they are not out to get handguns and shotguns, only the evil “assault weapons.”

This stance becomes suspicious when looking at FBI homicide data. In the year 2011, there were only 323 murders in which a rifle was used. For comparison, there were 728 murders performed with “personal weapons” (hands, fists, feet, etc.). You can see this data at the FBI website.

So the question becomes, why is so much emphasis being put on a weapon that is used so infrequently in crimes? The answer is that the politicians know that the current climate does not allow for them to begin trying to take handguns and shotguns for the citizens. They must first begin with the “extreme” weapons. After they are gone, the extreme weapons can become the handguns that have the ability to hold a large number of rounds and are larger than an arbitrary caliber limit. Look at the recent bill in New York. The previous 2004 Assault Weapons Ban limited the number of rounds allowed to be held in a weapon to 10. But that was in 2004. New York decided that in 2013 citizens should only be allowed to have 7 rounds in their weapons. I can only assume that the natural pattern from here will be 7, 5, 3, and then 1. Because what citizen who has proven to be sufficiently trained enough in firearm use to own a weapon should need more than 1 shot?